| Abstract [eng] |
SUMMARY Surprises in the court proceedings are one of the most frequent types of misuses. They usually result from the actions of the parties involved in the proceedings or the court hearing the case. Generally, they appear through the late submission of evidence or through incomprehensible judgement. Given that such surprises lead to delays in the process and thus violate one of the fundamental human rights, i.e the right to a proper hearing of the case, its occurrence is always assessed in a negative context and is undesirable in any court proceedings. In order to ensure the implementation of the principle of avoidance of procedural surprises, the law foresees various negative consequences for this misuse (e.g. a rejection of late submited evidences, penalties, damages, or even withdrawal of a judgment). On the other hand, there are some problems in both, i.e. the doctrine of law and in the practice, where the principle of avoidance of procedural surprises contradicts other principles of law. In such a case, the courts often need to decide which principle is more important (e.g. a rejection of late submited evidences will protect the principle of avoidance of surprises, but may violate the rights of the defense). The case-law analysis revealed that the significance of surprise to the final decision is a crucial criteria in the judgement process. Therefore, in some cases, procedural surprises can be tolerated. Although the legislation in Lithuania provides courts with sufficient powers to fight with procedural surprises, the analysis has shown that these measures are still rarely applied, fearing negative consequences (e.g. withdrawal of a judgement). Scarce application of existing measures to prevent surprises often leads to misuse by the process participants. Due to the above mentioned reasons, there are still a lot of cases in which evidence is provided at the pre-trial stage. Therefore, we can conclude that problems related to the prevention of procedural surprises have not yet been fully resolved and the issue of such surprises in the civil proceedings continues to require additional attention. |
